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The Affirmative Action Puzzle: A Living History from Reconstruction to Today
A rich, multifaceted history of affirmative action from the Civil Rights Act of 1866 through today's tumultuous times From acclaimed legal historian, author of a biography of Louis Brandeis ("Remarkable" -Anthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books, "Definitive"-Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic) and Dissent and the Supreme Court ("Riveting"-Dahlia Lithwick, The New York Times Book Review), a history of affirmative action from its beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to the first use of the term in 1935 with the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act (the Wagner Act) to 1961 and John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10925, mandating that federal contractors take "affirmative action" to ensure that there be no discrimination by "race, creed, color, or national origin" down to today's American society. Melvin Urofsky explores affirmative action in relation to sex, gender, and education and shows that nearly every public university in the country has at one time or another instituted some form of affirmative action plan--some successful, others not. Urofsky traces the evolution of affirmative action through labor and the struggle for racial equality, writing of World War I and the exodus that began when some six million African Americans moved northward between 1910 and 1960, one of the greatest internal migrations in the country's history. He describes how Harry Truman, after becoming president in 1945, fought for Roosevelt's Fair Employment Practice Act and, surprising everyone, appointed a distinguished panel to serve as the President's Commission on Civil Rights, as well as appointing the first black judge on a federal appeals court in 1948 and, by executive order later that year, ordering full racial integration in the armed forces. In this important, ambitious, far-reaching book, Urofsky writes about the affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court: cases that either upheld or struck down particular plans that affected both governmental and private entities. We come to fully understand the societal impact of affirmative action: how and why it has helped, and inflamed, people of all walks of life; how it has evolved; and how, and why, it is still needed.
Melvin I. Urofsky (Author), Dan Woren (Narrator)
Audiobook
Dissent and the Supreme Court: Its Role in the Court's History and the Nation's Constitutional Dialo
From the admired judicial authority, author of Louis D. Brandeis (RemarkableAnthony Lewis, The New York Review of Books; MonumentalAlan M. Dershowitz, The New York Times Book Review), Division and Discord, and Supreme Decisions Melvin Urofsky's major new book looks at the role of dissent in the Supreme Court and the meaning of the Constitution through the greatest and longest lasting public-policy debate in the country's history, among members of the Supreme Court, between the Court and the other branches of government, and between the Court and the people of the United States. Urofsky writes of the necessity of constitutional dialogue as one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. In Dissent and the Supreme Court, he explores the great dissents throughout the Court's 225-year history. He discusses in detail the role the Supreme Court has played in helping to define what the Constitution means, how the Court's majority opinions have not always been right, and how the dissenters, by positing alternative interpretations, have initiated a critical dialogue about what a particular decision should mean. This dialogue is sometimes resolved quickly; other times it may take decades before the Court adjusts its position. Louis Brandeis's dissenting opinion about wiretapping became the position of the Court four decades after it was written. The Court took six decades to adopt the dissenting opinion of the first Justice John Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that segregation on the basis of race violated the Constitution in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Urofsky shows that the practice of dissent grew slowly but steadily and that in the nineteenth century dissents became more frequent. In the (in)famous case of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion upheld slavery, declaring that blacks could never be citizens. The justice received intense condemnations from several of his colleagues, but it took a civil war and three constitutional amendments before the dissenting view prevailed and Dred Scott was overturned. Urofsky looks as well at the many aspects of American constitutional life that were affected by the Earl Warren Court free speech, race, judicial appointment, and rights of the accused and shows how few of these decisions were unanimous, and how the dissents in the earlier cases molded the results of later decisions; how with Roe v. Wade the Dred Scott of the modern era dissent fashioned subsequent decisions, and how, in the Court, a dialogue that began with the dissents in Roe has shaped every decision since. Urofsky writes of the rise of conservatism and discusses how the resulting appointments of more conservative jurists to the bench put the last of the Warren liberals William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall in increasingly beleaguered positions, and in the minority. He discusses the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Yet within the Marble Palace, the members of the Supreme Court continue to hear arguments, vote, and draft majority opinions, while the minority continues to respectfully dissent.The Framers understood that if a constitution doesn't grow and adapt, it atrophies and dies, and if it does, so does the democratic society it has supported. Dissent on the Court and off, Urofsky argues has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so.(With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)From the Hardcover edition.
Melvin I. Urofsky (Author), Dan Woren (Narrator)
Audiobook
The first full-scale biography in twenty-five years of one of the most important and distinguished justices to sit on the Supreme Court-an audio book that reveals Louis D. Brandeis the reformer, lawyer, and jurist, and Brandeis the man, in all of his complexity, passion, and wit. As a lawyer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he pioneered how modern law is practiced. The author of the right to privacy he led the way in creating the role of the lawyer as counselor and pioneered the idea of pro bono publico work by attorneys. Named to the Supreme Court, Brandeis, ranked as one of the nation's leading progressive reformers. He invented savings bank life insurance in Massachusetts and was a driving force in the development of the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the law establishing the Federal Trade Commission. As an economist and moralist, Brandeis warned in 1914 that banking and stock brokering must be separate, and twenty years later, during the New Deal, his recommendation was finally enacted into law only to be undone by Ronald Reagan, which led to the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s and the world financial collapse of 2008. And at age fifty-eight Brandeis became the head of the American Zionist movement. During the next seven years, Brandeis transformed it from a marginal activity into a powerful force in American Jewish affairs. A huge and galvanizing biography, a revelation of one man's effect on American society and jurisprudence, and the electrifying story of his time.
Melvin I. Urofsky, Melvin Urofsky (Author), Sean Pratt (Narrator)
Audiobook
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